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<title>a rotting smile made by playing pretend does not have any value at all by helpwhatshappeninguh</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29552316">a rotting smile made by playing pretend does not have any value at all</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/helpwhatshappeninguh/pseuds/helpwhatshappeninguh'>helpwhatshappeninguh</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Character Study, Exiled TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), How Do I Tag, Hurt No Comfort, Not Beta Read, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, idk i just spat out word vomit man, kind of? IDK, kinda a vent fic almost lmao, not graphic tho its just used as a symbol, violence to an animal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:35:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,201</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29552316</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/helpwhatshappeninguh/pseuds/helpwhatshappeninguh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy thinks on what has happened before his exile, and what has let him here.</p><p>//read tags, this is not very happy//</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>No Romantic Relationship(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a rotting smile made by playing pretend does not have any value at all</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>please let me know if there's any tags i missed, i don't want to hurt anyone</p><p>lmk if there's any grammar/spelling mistakes, i spat this out in less than an hour :)</p><p>TW for: animal violence (not graphic, cutting a dogs tail off is mentioned,) suicide, and suicidal thoughts.</p><p>this was written and inspired by the song charles by balloon, namely the self coverrrr</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>L’Manburg is like a dog that runs in circles, eagerly chasing its tail, Tommy thinks, as he’s led away from faces that were once familiar to him by a mask-wearing stranger.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It is stuck to run in circles forever; Looping and looping, the major parts of history repeating over and over, again and again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Violence is the tail it is forced to chase; and when it catches it, it has nothing left to do but continue again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Violence has never been far away from L’Manburg; its always been there, always attached to the name; it was just not obvious before. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s rather obvious now; The parallels happening again. Now that he’s on his own, Tommy has a lot of time to think about this, think about how similar the screams in his ears were when L'Manburg was first rigged by bombs to when Wilbur decided to blow it all up again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>L’Manburg had never truly been a safe space. It had lost the right to claim that as soon as the first blood was shed, as soon as that stupid drug van was set up. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So what had he been fighting for?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Freedom? There was none of that. The most free he had ever been was before Wilbur joined; back when even Dream had no reason to hold the discs over his head and simply kept them as a reminder. A reminder of what he could do; a reminder of his current reality.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Acceptance? Maybe that was it. Maybe he wanted to not be seen as a child anymore; maybe he wanted Wilbur to trust him and believe he was a </span>
  <em>
    <span>responsible adult. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That didn’t matter anymore. Wilbur was dead. He’d gained nothing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And now, because of all those decisions; because of actions he had taken when the only future seemed to be the one right before his eyes; he was stuck.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t escape this. There was no way to go back to how things had been. Back to when his biggest problem was the one time he </span>
  <em>
    <span>hit Dream with a minecart. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And so, he was stuck in a cycle forever. Again, and again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Dream liked to take his stuff everyday. He liked to call over Tommy, switching rapidly between patronizing him to acting like a friend. It gave him whiplash the first few days; but eventually, he just couldn’t bring himself to </span>
  <em>
    <span>think, to feel anything about what Dream was saying</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Everyday became the same; molding an angry look on his face as to not bore the masked monster as he threw items he couldn’t bring himself to care about to their destruction. Again, and again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ghostbur had come with him. Ghostbur had decided to come with him on the first day; and maybe, maybe that was why the first days had filled him with hope. Like everything was going to be okay; like this was only temporary; like the scars would close over and leave nothing behind. Then Ghostbur became spare; his visits seemed to happen erratically, and with Tommy having so much time with his thoughts and being unable to think about anything but the line of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tommy, are we the bad guys? </span>
  </em>
  <span>He found himself wishing Ghostbur wouldn’t come back, that he wouldn’t have to see the stupid face of Wilbur smiling back at him. And so, Ghostbur never returned. The days became empty once again and Logstedshire was significantly quieter and less blue as the days went on. Again, and again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Techno showed up once. He had laughed in his face; made fun of his situation; made fun of him being betrayed by his own best friend. It had hurt; hadn’t Techno done enough to him? He’d betrayed him once; not just him, had betrayed everyone who ever put a second of work into L’Manburg. And yet Techno considered himself to be the one who was betrayed; despite being the only one who held his ideals. Rage burned itself into his heart, settling in the depths and taking over the memories he had once wanted to call happy; burying them deep enough that he could never pull them out again. Anger never seemed to leave his mind; yet his words couldn’t pierce together any statements to explain anything. So he stayed quiet. Again, and again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tommy finds himself staring into the lava often. The dog doesn’t stop chasing its tail. It runs, and it runs, never stopping. It chases after endless destruction; chases after the violence and pain and betrayal and </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurt </span>
  </em>
  <span>eagerly, not understanding anything, until it sinks its teeth into the tail and yelps with pain; before forgetting and deciding to return to its cycle. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So why not cut off the tail? You can’t feel pain if there’s nothing there, right? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Why not get rid of him? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He's the violence, isn't he? He challenged Dream to the duel, he was the one who instantly reestablished the government, and he was the one who burned down George's house. And yet he was always there; always next to L'Manburg, always a named cited under the events. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It had never been in a positive light though, had it?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His skin burns, burns with longing when Dream drags him away from the burning lake. Burns with remorse, burns with hatred, burns with wonder, burns with anger of everything happening. Burns with anger that he’s being taken away from the fiery exit, burns with so many emotions he can’t even form into words. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wishes he could go back. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tommy doesn’t like this future. He doesn’t like this Dream. He doesn’t like this Tubbo. He can’t even bring himself to pretend he likes who he is. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Some days he likes to think this is a dream; that he’ll wake up and be relaxing with Tubbo and his bees; that he’ll be starting religions with Dream; that he’ll be back with Wilbur, back in the drug van where despite so much blood had been spilled his </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive </span>
  </em>
  <span>brother had sung to him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>L’Manburg was so full of pain yet whenever they thought of abandoning it, they were brought back to all the memories from the signing of a declaration of independence (overshadowed by a declaration of war,), laughing in the van together (overshadowed by winces everytime someone moved too suddenly from injuries that had yet to heal,) and just being able to </span>
  <em>
    <span>be a child </span>
  </em>
  <span>(Overshadowed by the fact that he was a child fighting in a war.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He knows the dog is going to keep causing pain to itself. He knows the dog is pitiful to be seen by anyone else; everyone winces every time they look its way. But they don’t want to cut the tail off the dog; they don’t want to have the sad eyes of an animal stare back at them, glimmering with betrayal and sadness.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But that’s not enough. One day, he looks at the dog. He looks at how it has acted; looks at its face and doesn’t see the face of  a harmless puppy; he sees the face of a monster who only wishes to cause pain, inflict hurt on others; and imbue the seeds of betrayal into place</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t feel bad about cutting the tail off after that. </span>
</p><p>
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